Rupa Huq MP: speeches

Speeches

• 1 May 2025 · Parkinson’s Awareness Month · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech about this very complex condition. He mentioned Rory Cellan-Jones, who is well known as a BBC technology correspondent and, as the person who houses Sophie from Romania, a famous dog lover. He is my constituent in Ealing. I totally agree with my hon. Friend; the “Movers and Shakers” podcast, which won the Broadcasting Press Guild’s best podcast of the year award, has shown with such humanity and warmth the ups and downs—a lot of downs—of this very sad condition, which is growing. I assure the 153,000 sufferers in this country and the 10 million worldwide that today’s attendance is a reflection not of the importance of this debate, but of electoral events outside this House. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Parky charter to encourage more research into this terrible condition that afflicts so many, which Rory lobbies me quite often about, deserves Government funding? I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister on the Treasury Bench is also listening.

• 3 Mar 2025 · Independent Schools: VAT and Business Rates Relief · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Vickers, and to see the newly minted Minister in his place—I think it is the first time I have been in a debate with him. It is also a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), who was the Secretary of State; I sometimes see him on the District line, because we head the same way. I rise to speak on behalf of constituents who have contacted me about this issue—in my inbox, in person at the advice surgery I do every Friday, and on the doorsteps when meeting and greeting voters in the recent general election. This issue comes alongside an array of others raised by mums and dads. I am familiar with the arguments and have read the Government’s response; it contains very compelling figures—94% of schoolchildren in the UK, including my own, attend state schools. I also know that the policy polls very well. However, there is also that 6%, and 14 of those private schools are in the constituency of Ealing Central and Act; in 2023 there were 15, in fact, but one has closed its doors since then. I want to vocalise some of their concerns to my hon. Friend the Minister. Fourteen is a higher than average number of private schools in a constituency, and the petition was signed by 821 people in the constituency—although that is not even in the top 10. The heat map shows that the top 10 seats all have more than 1,000 signatories. I think two of those constituencies are in Surrey, but the remaining eight tend to have a W, NW or SW postcode. What I am trying to say is that the distribution of the signatures and the schools is a fairly west London-type phenomenon. In fact, if we look at the 650 constituencies across the land, the first one on the list is single digits; it is a seat in Wales starting with A—Aberconwy, or somewhere like that. This is not a phenomenon everywhere, but in west London it is not that unusual. The high school of the hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford) was not very far from my high school in my constituency. I was a Notting Hill girl, and I know that he was a St Benedict’s pupil back in the day. The prep school of the Minister who is often sent to respond to this debate—my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (James Murray), who is my neighbouring MP—was Durston House, and it is in my seat of Ealing Central and Acton. We should not demonise these parents. In some senses, they are people who I have grown up with and live alongside, and they do have genuine concerns. As a parent, I would never dream of going private, but I can understand and accept that people do. I went to school in the 80s—the dark days of Thatcherism—before the Labour Government reforms that made excellent state schools in my constituency. My parents chose to put me in the state sector for primary school, at Montpelier primary, and as a parent myself, I have benefited from Gordon Brown’s reforms. The child trust fund came to maturity for my son recently; it did go up in the end—it was the one that could go up as well as down. I have not used the private sector as a parent—as a child I did, but it was not my own choice. I completely appreciate that people, like my own parents at the time, make enormous sacrifices to send their children to independent schools, as my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Alison Taylor) said. I have heard people say on the doorstep, “We have the worst car. We never go on holiday.” That was me in the ’80s. I want to point out some unintended consequences of the policy to the Minister aware. These are people who consider themselves to be working people. The strapline of the Labour manifesto was “No taxes on working people”. We should be careful with our rhetoric sometimes and not seek to—[Hon. Members: “Come over here!”] Hang on—let me carry on. The first unintended consequence—or commonly misstated thing—is that pupils with an education, health and care plan still remain eligible. It is impossible to get one in west London. We have all taken on new wards in our boundaries, so now I do not only represent Ealing borough but a bit of Hammersmith and Fulham too. A head from one of primary schools was saying that they have a large percentage of special educational needs and disabilities pupils. The wards that I have inherited are from the north of the borough—Shepherd’s Bush way. Apparently, by the age that a child goes to school and those issues show up, it is kind of too late. A sharp-elbowed, middle-class parent from the south of the borough might have had their child assessed privately at a very young age, ensuring they have support all the way through, but by school age, there is a waiting list of many years to get the assessment and then it is potluck. The problem is that the words “private school” imply a whole load of things—but they are not all Eton. Some of the comms around this policy have not been done very sensitively. I know that offence was taken at a comment about how they all have astroturf pitches, swimming pools and embossed stationery; that did not go down well with parents and heads in my constituency. They are not all like that. There are smaller SEND schools and smaller faith schools—what I am trying to say is that they are not all Eton, and some of the comms are based on a caricature. We should be careful about what we do in that regard. One parent, Matthew, forwarded me a missive from the private school that his boys are at, which read: “For music lessons with peripatetic teachers employed by the School…VAT will need to be applied at 20%.” He continued: “Traditionally the tax system has been a way of discouraging people from picking up bad habits like smoking and drinking. Not from picking up a trombone”. It seems as though people are capitalising on the policy, and then other things are coming in through the back door. I have been replying and trying to sound sympathetic to these parents. My constituent also said: “you referred to a consultation…on the VAT proposals—yet like most government consultations, what was passed didn’t seem, in any significant way, different to what had been proposed.” Maybe that is a lesson in life for all of us: if we put something out for consultation, we should make it look like we listened, because he is saying that it came back exactly the same. The right hon Member for East Hampshire raised that elitist private schools such as Eton have actually done quite well out of this policy, because they can cash in on windfalls from the new VAT rules on independent schools—they can claim it back on capital projects, such as buildings and land acquisition, over the last 10 years. All the VAT on costs, which is now 20%, is recoverable when factoring in non-business use, so the policy will basically hand money back to schools such as Eton from Treasury coffers. Surely there is a loophole there—an unintended consequence—that needs to be addressed by my hon. Friend the Minister. There are long lists of such things. The Times says: “Eton spent more than £20 million on a sports centre in 2023 and Winchester College’s”— where I think our former Prime Minister went— “accounts from the same year said it spent £15 million on capital expenditure”. It also says that Radley College, in Oxfordshire has a 20-acre solar farm and 40-acre woodland, and that Charterhouse in Surrey “built two boarding houses in 2021 and is developing a theatre and lecture theatre” Again, costs can come back for the big boys, but not for the little ones.

• 15 Jan 2025 · Point of Order · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I wish to raise an all-party parliamentary matter that is causing international ructions. Before Christmas, a report surfaced in the name of the all-party parliamentary group for the Commonwealth. Basically, to the annoyance of APPG officers and many members of the public, it was a hatchet job on the interim Government of Bangladesh. On a delegation to the high commission in London during recess, I was picked up on this. Even when I went to Bangladesh, the interim leader, Professor Yunus, a Nobel prize winner, also said, “What are your Government doing issuing these falsities in the name of Parliament?” I wish to seek your advice on this, Madam Deputy Speaker. Can I get clarification on the significance of such things being issued? When I inquired into this, I was told that a pressure group had put out this report without final sign-off. So do these things constitute policy in any way, and is it right that a partisan organisation can hijack an APPG and then besmirch the name of our Parliament and our Government?

• 2 Dec 2024 · Bangladesh: Attacks on Hindu Community · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner), for raising these important issues. We must be vigilant against all attacks on minorities, be they Buddhists, Christians or the Hindus in Bangladesh. Does the Minister agree that, sadly, at times, since the country’s formation in 1971, there have been communal tensions of this kind? They are not new. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have sent me a list of flashpoint events. Between 1974 and 2001, the Hindu population in Bangladesh decreased from 13.5% to 8.5%, so this is not a new phenomenon. May I also caution the Minister? Following the collapse of the regime after the murder of 800 students in the summer, some people may seek to exploit these tensions, and we need to stamp on that hard. Can the Minister assure us that we are doing all that we can to enable the country to make the transition to democracy, and to what people are calling Bangladesh 2.0?

• 11 Sept 2024 · Democracy in Bangladesh · Hansard source

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  I have checked, and apparently some of those memorandums of understanding are being looked at by the new Government one by one to see if they are carried over. The hon. Member makes an excellent point. Let us have a reset. We have a fresh Government in this country and a fresh one in Bangladesh, so it is time to look at these things through new eyes. Back in the summer—in fact, it was at the same time as we saw race riots in this country—there was footage of jubilant Bangladeshis marching through the streets of Tower Hamlets, the hon. Member’s borough. That confused many people, but it was in happiness; they were not angry ethnic mobs. There is a big global diaspora, with 70,000 in this country, including me. The diaspora can be seen across Europe. In some of the middle eastern emirate states, the diaspora has supplied cheap labour to build such things as World cup stadiums in Qatar. Bangladesh is a place that exports people.

• 11 Sept 2024 · Democracy in Bangladesh · Hansard source

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  I completely endorse what the hon. Member is saying. We do need to temper our language and be careful. Every Member in this House has a curry house in their constituency, and that will not be an Indian restaurant—it will be Bangladeshis who run it. An enormous contribution has been made to our society. With the things we saw this summer, we should stamp on the misinformation that I referred to in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi). Again, those Bangladeshi university students showed courage, and they were not just the elitist ones from the capital city; it happened all over the country at public and private universities, with boys and girls. Their demands were initially against corruption but they grew to wider pro-democracy concerns and the overthrow of the Prime Minister. So far, so predictable, but then in the biggest plot twist since Bobby Ewing in the shower, when all those tensions were coming to a head, we heard that the previous Prime Minister had suddenly scarpered. She helicoptered out. A regime so entrenched that it looked like it would last forever suddenly collapsed like a pack of cards. In January, there was an election in Bangladesh—we hear that 40% of the globe is going to the polls this year—although there were not any other real candidates in it, so that was declared null and void. We now have this caretaker Government who are there to oversee fresh elections. We do not know exactly when those will be.

• 11 Sept 2024 · Democracy in Bangladesh · Hansard source

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  I totally agree with the hon. Member. The UK has a unique historical role in the colonial histories and as head of the Commonwealth. He does great work on the APPG. We should be vigilant on all these things.

• 11 Sept 2024 · Democracy in Bangladesh · Hansard source

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  There is plenty more to say. We need a fresh start—a reset, as the right hon. Gentleman said, and “in neither Washington nor Moscow”, as the slogan used to be. We need less gerontocracy. Yunus is 84, though he is very sharp. The leader he overthrew is 76, and the opposition rival, Khaleda Zia, is 78. I have some questions for the Minister. As I said, there is a big job to do. Given our unique role in all this, we should offer support. Apparently, the constitution is being amended and redrafted. Could we lend expertise there? British lawyers have good form on this; we constructed the European convention on human rights. Capacity building is needed to cleanse all sorts of institutions of party people who were in the pocket of the last regime. Hendon police training college is renowned all over the world; perhaps we can rebuild the police in Bangladesh, because apparently there has been a bit of a vacuum there recently. The Stormtrooper-like Rapid Action Battalion force should be disbanded, and the death penalty should be gone. Maybe we could do something about climate finance, because countries in the global south face the brunt of climate problems, and we are in the run-up to COP29. These measures do not even have to cost anything; we could put a polluter-pays levy on some countries. Lastly, we need to recover some of the assets. The right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) mentioned foreign Governments’ interference. When I last went to Bangladesh, I saw Chinese power plants and Russian flyovers—lots of things like that; I cannot remember what they all were. Money that belongs to the Bangladeshi people was looted and plundered. We need asset tracing to recover it. I understand that Professor Yunus is coming to the UN General Assembly. It would be great if His Majesty’s Government warmly welcomed him—I do not know if they will be represented by the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West), the Prime Minister or whoever. We are talking about Bangladesh 2.0 and human rights. When Gandhi was asked what he thought of western civilisation, he famously said: “I think it would be a good idea”. Let us make sure that democracy and human rights in Bangladesh are not just a good idea, but a given. People are talking about this as a second revolution. Let us rebuild Bangladesh, so that human rights and democracy are a given. I look forward to hearing what the Minister says.

• 11 Sept 2024 · Democracy in Bangladesh · Hansard source

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  I agree. Our loved ones were worried, and we did not know that was going on. We are talking about a country that can, at will, shut off the internet so that people cannot communicate with the outside world, or even with each other via phone signal—there was a Digital Security Act that was a bit sinister, and stopped all freedom of speech, thought, expression and assembly. Yes, we must rebuild. The hon. Gentleman made a great point. The sight of Muhammad Yunus—until recently, the previous regime had tried to lock him up—was baffling but reassuring for many, because he is globally recognised. He was a character on “The Simpsons”; Lisa discovered his microfinance loans to women. Among his friends are the Obamas and the Clintons, and 197 world leaders have signed a memorandum to welcome him to power. He has the in-tray from hell, and a big job to do in repairing democracy. He was here in March, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Rushanara Ali) organised a meeting for him with the all-party parliamentary group for Bangladesh, which she then chaired. He is such a modest man; he had 200 different court cases against him, but he did not go on about them—it had to be teased out of him by Baroness Helena Kennedy, who chaired that day. He is known as the banker to the poor. Nobody saw this coming. Bangladesh is a country of contradictions. It has 175 million people on a land mass the size of England and Wales, and is beset by natural disasters—at the moment, there are the worst floods in 30 years. Youth unemployment is sky high, which partly explains the protests.

• 11 Sept 2024 · Democracy in Bangladesh · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend always makes excellent points. When we are talking about minorities such as Hindus and Buddhists—there are various minorities—it is interesting to look at who is propagating the stories. There have also been pictures of devout Muslim students from the madrasas in their topi defending Hindu homes. BBC Verify has shown that some of these attacks have been on people associated with the previous regime. Sometimes these things are a bit amplified by people with agendas, but my hon. Friend makes a great point.

• 11 Sept 2024 · Democracy in Bangladesh · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is so right. I did not see any demos in Reading, but I do know that in all sorts of European capitals, including Paris and Rome, as well as in Manchester and Trafalgar Square, there were solidarity protests when these things went on. The diaspora has been active. I am a London-born Bangladeshi. I kind of knew about the country from my parents telling me that it was this paradise of coconut trees and those kind of things. I only went as a teenager. More recently, as an adult and as an MP, I have noticed the slightly more sinister side, with things like enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings. Every human rights organisation—Amnesty International and so on—has condemned those. I try to keep out of this subject—I do not have a very Bangladeshi electorate—but I was jolted when in 2018 I heard from the family of Shahidul Alam, a photographer who was taking pictures of an earlier student protest, that he had been banged up and tortured. Then I had to get involved. I was there as recently as May with the excellent all-party parliamentary group on global sexual and reproductive health rights—it has been reconstituted just today—for a United Nations Development Programme conference. Again, I realised that I was in a one-party police state—it is not quite right. As one of the diaspora, these human rights crackdowns came into my inbox, and they reached fever pitch in July when hundreds of brave students gave their lives in a struggle. Before we broke for recess, I had a panel discussion, with the panellists including Toby Cadman, a barrister who has defended people from the Jamaat party that was banned by the previous regime—it has just been unbanned—and the head of Amnesty International UK. The discussion, which we had in the Grand Committee Room of Westminster Hall, was so oversubscribed that people had to be turned away, such was the thirst for information. I see the hon. Member for Leicester South (Shockat Adam) in his place. He was there, and I think that his defeat of Jonathan Ashworth may have had something to do with some comments about this subject, but let us not speculate.

• 11 Sept 2024 · Democracy in Bangladesh · Hansard source

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  I will give way to the new Chair of the Defence Committee.

• 11 Sept 2024 · Democracy in Bangladesh · Hansard source

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  It was the sitar-loving George Harrison who sang that “Bangladesh…sure looks like a mess”. He made the observation in 1971, soon after the country’s formation, but it applies again since 5 August, after momentous events happened in that country. No one saw it coming, but the previous Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, who had looked so entrenched, was overthrown. Within days, her replacement was Professor Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel prize winner for his concept of microfinance. That did not happen without bloodshed. Hundreds of students were killed in the struggle for the new Bangladesh 2.0, as people have called it, and thousands injured. Bangladesh’s founding constitution—it is only a young country—stressed democracy, secularism and socialism, but in recent years it has become synonymous with corruption, authoritarianism and repression. There were echoes of Saddam Hussein’s fall when we saw TV pictures of statues of the first ever leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, toppled, with effigies of him burned and pictures smashed, from the capital city, Dhaka, to Tower Hamlets. It was all because of his daughter, the ex-PM Sheikh Hasina, who had ruled in two bursts for a large percentage of the country’s existence. It was she who ensured the omnipresent pictures of her dad across the nation. For me, it had echoes of Tiananmen Square in 1990, although in this case the students won. There may be a fledgling interim Government, but I feel they have very good intentions, and we should congratulate them.